(Jim) Dean is not a late-comer, or someone who likes Lieberman but happens to prefer Lamont. Rather, he searched for months to find a challenger to Joe Lieberman, and was one of the people who drew Lamont into the race. Now, Democracy for America has endorsed Lamont.

Now obviously, Jim Dean would not be fighting with such determination to knock off Lieberman, if his brother Howard really thought it was a terrible idea. Howard realizes how important it is to preserve every Democratic Senate seat if they want to win the majority, and ought to be willing to pull out all the stops to prevent a serious challenge to a good incumbent like Joe Lieberman. So you know that the DNC Chairman must really not care for Senator Lieberman.

So, is Howard Dean on crack or what? Why would he risk losing a safe (D) Senate seat? To appease the netroots who supported his failed candidacy? Because he doesn’t care about the Democratic party, just about his own personal Howard Dean movement? I don’t have a conspiracy theory here, I just plum don’t get it.

The worst part about this fiasco is how Republicans have wholly failed to capitalize on it. We’ve, sadly, limited ourselves to rooting for the better Dem, because there’s no real Republican challenger. My take is that it’s the winner syndrome: we’re not fighting because we already have everything worth having (presidency, both houses, most of the governorships, etc.). Unfortunately, we fail to realize that having won for so long means that it can only be downhill from here. I wish I saw some passion from my side to stay at the top.